[LINK] The PLAN, and broadband speeds?

[rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au]

Stil,

Stilgherrian wrote:
> On 23/6/07 6:19 AM, "Marghanita da Cruz" <marghanita at ramin.com.au> wrote:
>   
>> With your line about the amount of bandwidth...this is going to increase
>> over time, the question is what should we be buying now, not selling the
>> farm to buy a 2007 mega speed white elephant.
>>     
>
> Yeah, but how about we make sure we buy a system where our investment now
> forms part of a strategy to build that megaspeed network in the future?
> stepping stones to the future, not dead ends?
>
> I don't know much about WiMaX, but from the sounds of it, it's something
> that'd have to be replaced with something else not that many years into the
> future.
>   
"It depends".

Let's see. I know some people who live outside hamlet called Windellema 
in the southern highlands. Line of sight, I guess they'd be 10 km from 
the nearest likely spot for any kind of base station. Nobody can 
seriously propose that a location like that should have fibre strung all 
the way to the house. So what's wrong with a moderate wireless as a 
replacement to dial-up? "Oh but it's not the very best" or "but what 
about The Vision" are both empty arguments.

And if you have to replace a wireless link, that's a lot less work than 
having to replace a fixed link.

So in the right application, wireless is perfectly acceptable. Here's 
the choice:

- Go from dial-up to WiMax, and get a share of a moderately-fast channel.
- Wait until someone decides to run a 20 km fibre run for a tiny handful 
of customers, which might never happen.

Which is better?

RC